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Alec took another sip of his drink. Once again he felt bad. Once again he felt utterly alone,
lonely in the middle of dozens of other persons, who looked as if they had such fun that he felt somewhat guilty not to be
enjoying himself. Alone with the girl who was next to him, who, besides being gorgeous as Abyss, also had conversation and
seemed very interesting. Alec had the strongest feeling that, had he met her anywhere else, she would have been a major point
of his existence for some time. Right now, though, she was just empty, hollow, as if she had been carved up inside, leaving
only a film-thin husk, a shade, an image. He felt the same about the whole of the club, about the place, too, about the music,
and, in fact, a lot about himself too. Once again, he decided to stop.
He mumbled some kind of excuse, got his coat
back and left the place, leaving the brain-wracking music and darkness and smoke and bottles behind.
The air was fresh.
There was some light, diffusing over the north-eastern part of the sky, right there above the Slopes, Luthon's poor neighbourhoods,
where he knew kids was dreaming about being him right at that very moment. Like a fairy-tale hero. Who'd be drunk. It didn't
even make him smile: at any other time, it would have.
He felt bad. Something missing, something not at its rightful
place. The walls and street moved a bit, and he was certain he did not walk straight, but he concentrated on that feeling,
that impression of feeling dirty and polluted inside. Alec was not a real advocate of any purity or cleanliness of any sort:
he'd grown up knowing that life was indeed dirty, and that the dirty parts were the most fun of it. Still, tonight, as numerous
times before, he felt bad, decided to stop.
There were some of his so-called who were even more on the dangerous slope
than he was, though. People whose brain was already trapped in that world of clubs, drugs, alcohol, easy sex, money. People
who'd never stop, short of a miracle. Alec figured it wasn't that much the chemicals that did the trick. Even though the chemicals
in his own blood right now were screaming the contrary. It wasn't them that did the trick. It's the not thinking. It's the
way they made you think only about them. You didn't care about anything else. As long as you had those, and really, they weren't
hard to find in his world, you didn't give a toss about the rest. You didn't give yourself responsibilities, and especially
not the responsibility to give importance to things. To give them value. To make choices. And it's not really that living
without them is hard. It's just that living with them is so easy. It just feels so simple, so natural. And really, even you
thought the contrary at some time, when the opportunity presents itself, you really dont see why you should deny yourself
that simple pleasure. But he had to. He decided to stop.
It's not that you didn't relate to people, either. Quite the
contrary, in fact. You related to them too much, too fast, too easily. In that state, you got to the heart of people, to their
stories, to their own little theories about life or themselves. And you gave them yours, too, only they are so stripped of
all the feelings that go with them when you hold them to your heart that they appear so empty, ridiculous and meaningless,
and depress you so much. One way or the other, it burned you out. You lost interest in other people so fast Alec couldn't
think, apart from his parents (and really, he hadn't seen them for so long that they felt very away from his life), couldn't
think for the life of him of someone he would consider close to him. Because when you really relate to someone, really feel
close to them, it wasn't so much what you knew of them that mattered. It was what they wouldn't tell you. It was the time
spent together. It was the feelings, the very animal sense of presence, that mattered. Things tragically absent of any relationship
he had in his life. He should, and he did, decide to stop.
He thought too much. It had always been his problem. He
thought too much for his own good, and it always wound him up like this. Oh, wait . . . that's what it made you think.
See, that's the problem, too. You don't really know what's a part of "it" and what isn't. And as long as you're defining the
borders, you do all you can to keep out of "it" a lot of things you like. And that's a part of "it" too, for sure. It's all
so complicated . . . It's like losing innocence. Once lost, it is never regained. Its like reading the end of a book.
Once you've seen it, it can never happen any other way. Once you became used to it, you could never go back to what it is
not knowing "it." Then again, Alec wasn't sure he would want to. Losing knowledge was one of his great fears, as he felt hed
already lost so much. Alec wasn't sure, but still, he had decided to stop, hadn't he?
He arrived at his place, not
very far from the club, in the posh and polished part of the town. Punched in the code. Got inside the elevator, resting his
back against the mirrored wall, feeling his head keep moving several seconds after he did, in the white and harsh light of
the big and
empty metal box getting him to his loft on the seventeenth story.
He managed to open the door, after
several moments of disorientation, and crashed on his bed, his last thought before sleeping being that he knew he wouldn't
stop.
Short of a miracle, he wouldn't stop.
*****
He dreamed. He dreamed he was seeing through the eye
of a newt no a salamander. He felt cold, like he was inside water. It was dark all around him. The round, spherical eye of
the salamander went up, and soon it became down, as it happens in dreams. It kept moving, and finally went to rest on a fire.
He saw other forms, other shapes, moving through the fire. Other salamanders. And Alec, through the eye of the salamander,
felt a burning curiosity as to what it felt like to live in the fire, to breathe in it, to be a part of it, as the others
were.
Then, as it happens in dreams, he was inside it, which not so big a stretch from looking at it. And he felt the
fire he breathed. It reminded him oddly of those burning cocktails you drink through a straw, that don't feel so much like
alcohol because it mostly felt as something at the same time cold and burning going through your throat, and not much else.
He moved about in the fire, and then saw, outside it, well away from the light and heat, other salamanders, moving about in
the water. And just like when he was in the water and looked longingly at the fire without knowing how it was, he looked longingly
at the water, this time knowing what it was. And he knew he couldn't go back there anymore, it would just feel tedious and
void of any of the wonderful things it had when he didn't know fire. He couldn't stop. Short of a miracle, he couldn't go
back to the water. And he didn't really want to, either. He'd went further than that and couldn't go back, even if the fire
did burn him. His place was neither in fire or in water. He wasn't sure it was anywhere, in fact. That fact terrified him.
Then
the water became a green field, and the fire became white streaming light, and he was on the pitch of the Luthon stadium,
running and running towards the other goal. The round, spherical eye of the salamander became a ball and it was moving and
he was moving to meet it, and then he realized that none of that really mattered. Water or fire, it's all about what you make
of it, really. Wherever you are, when you act, when you do things You move anyway, so whats the point of having a place? It
was all about moving. Where you got just gave you a place to sit.
He had passed the salamander's deal. He had learned
to walk in fire, and he had left the waters of his youth behind. So what? Not even fire could keep him. It's not as if he'd
betrayed his past, whether the water of running around for fun and kicking a can to pretend you were Augusto Mariposa or the
fire of his nights under the flashing neons of the nightclubs, dancing his troubles away. Water and fire, it fuelled him.
It made him what he was. He had digested them, made them his. And not even them could keep him away.
He leaned heavily
on his step, ramming his right leg to the ground while throwing his left foot behind. Then he pushed his body forward and
sent his left foot hard against the ball, kicking it away at a speed he could not quite realize. And as he did this, he had
the vision of the waves sent around by a boat. Kicking this ball felt good. It felt good even after he had done it. The waves,
what it emitted, it just felt nice. Unlike what he had felt tonight. The things you do right They leave with a nice goodbye
and a promise to send postcards. They do good to everyone and everything around. And as you do them, they are undeniably yours,
they bear a part of what you are, taking it away to relieve you, and sending what you are all over the world.
In between
the waves and the darkness of the air above, he saw a small silver line, approaching fast. It was the ball, and once again
he became the ball.
He was moving so fast, so right, so well, towards something that was so extraordinary . . .
After
all, if they weren't extraordinary, they wouldn't be called miracles, would they?
*****
He woke up. Light streamed
through the curtains, and he checked his table watch. He'd slept for two and a half hours.
Somehow, he felt good. Somehow,
he did not go back to sleep.
Somehow, he could stop now.
*****
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